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On a Tortuous Political Problem: Bob Carter

LAST Wednesday, I had the privilege of appearing in front of the Australian Senate Select Committee on Climate Policy.

My main advice to the committee was that making a decision regarding an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) must be considered as a cost:benefit matter.

According to the only estimates that I could find, after ramp-up the cost of the Rudd ETS scheme is going to be about an additional $3,500 tax per year per Australian family. On the other side, the benefit will be a theoretical (i.e. modelled) reduction in temperature of less than 1/1000 deg. C.

I asked the committee if they had such figures in front of them (they didn’t), and expressed willingness to drop my estimates in favour of better-founded ones if the committee could provide them. Not a finger, or tongue, stirred!

Beyond recommending that a proper cost:benefit analysis should apply, I argued also for the implementation of a (Plan B) policy of adaptation to climate change in place of the intended (Plan A) emissions trading system. This follows the policy that I espoused in a recent talk at the New York Heartland-2 Climate Conference, a written version of which has been published in the April edition of Quadrant.

It seems to me that an adaptive Plan B, as well as being hugely cheaper than the tabled carbon dioxide taxation bill that the Senate Committee is now considering, will have the additional advantage of actually doing some good. However, this will be of much lesser importance for the politicians who are now involved, for their self-perceived need is for a pragmatic solution to what has become a tortuous political problem, quite irrespective of either the cost or of whether any implemented policy actually achieves beneficial ends beyond their own re-election.

I was appearing before the Committee as an expert scientist. Together with my companion Dr. Stewart Franks, I was received most courteously, and accorded every opportunity to explain my views. Looking back at the experience, however, what strikes me most strongly is the irrelevance of the scientific matters that Dr. Franks and I were primarily concerned with.

For it was quite plain that three matters, none of them scientific, were primarily exercising all members of the committee. They were:

1. BEWILDERMENT about being faced by two implacably opposing views from two groups of scientists who, prima facie, seem equally professionally credible, yet are each certain that their view is the right and the other’s wrong.

(Not equally authoritative, of course, for the authority lies overwhelmingly on the IPCC side of the argument).

2. INCREDULITY as to the possibility of a scam of the magnitude that is implied by the sceptics’ view being true. How could so many other official authorities, organisations and highly credentialled scientists be so wrong?

(As I said last week, you do have to admire the job that the Greens have done: since 1990 they’ve slowly and systematically stitched up the education system (schools down to kindergarten level and up to university), business, government bureaucracies (via the IPCC) and politicians alike, and the press were always there with them knitting furiously from the start, egged on by a multitude of self-interested scientists in funding feeding frenzy.)

3. A DEEP NEED to deal with the implacable reality that the members of the Committee perceive that the majority of their constituents believe that there is an AGW crisis, and therefore, to be re-elected, that they have to be seen to do something about it.

(I believe that in most cases this perception is now actually wrong, as indicated by a new poll yesterday that shows that only 1 in 3 Americans now believe AGW to be a significant problem.

Whereas it is true that up until about 2 years ago the public was convinced of the need for action, all the signs have long been that a majority of the public have now rumbled the scam – though not, of course, those who control the opinion polls and the media, where the alarmism still gets its routine daily push-alongs .)

I stress again, that none of these three matters is scientific. Rather they are entirely sociological/political in nature, from which I draw the key inference that the members of ETS investigatory committees like this one mostly need help with fashioning politically feasible solutions to the incredible mess that they now find themselves in – which, of course, results from both major Australian political parties having long pandered to deep Green ideologies in pursuit of votes.

It is certain that the enactment of the tabled CPRS emissions scheme would be a disaster for Australia, and nearly all Australians (those working for alternative energy providers and the financial markets being two obvious exceptions, for they will do very nicely thank you should the CPRS Bill be passed); indeed, I believe its passage would do immense damage to the national interest and economy, and represent the worst single piece of legislation to be passed by federal parliament since federation.

But stopping the tabled ETS Bill now, and preventing a new but substantially similar Bill being tabled again in the near future, can only be achieved by providing solutions for the various political negatives that current parliamentarians perceive will accompany any defeat or deferring of the Bill. The question of climate change legislation is now a fraught, entirely political exercise, and I believe that it demands new thinking towards an innovative Plan B.

As I wrote in Quadrant:

“A national climate policy that improves our ability to recognise, manage and adapt to natural climate change and events, as could be met by the creation of a HazNet organisation, is an urgent necessity, and would cost but a fraction of the mooted ETS. To boot, contingent damage to the economy, energy systems, the standard of living and the world food supply would be avoided. And, by their very nature, strategies that can cope with the dangers and vagaries of natural climate change will readily cope with human-caused change too, should that ever manifest itself. Why is it so difficult for Australia’s major political parties to discern this obvious truth?”

Bob Carter, Townsville, Australia

POSTSCRIPT

Interestingly, for the first time that I can recall, ABC Radio National reported some of the details of the Senate Committee session to which Dr. Franks and I delivered previously ABC-unmentionable sceptical views. They picked up the point that I made about cost, but not the other half of the equation that shows a miniscule and literally unmeasurable temperature benefit.

And they also reported Dr. Franks’ view that:

“the public, the global public in many senses and certainly in the Western world has been railroaded into this notion of disastrous climate change for which there is no empirical event and that actually there are very real consequences to many climate policies that are being forwarded. And we have seen this recently in the case of the increase in biofuels, the use of good, productive agricultural land in producing biofuels for the decadent West which has been estimated its lead to a 50 to 70 per cent increase in food prices over the last year or two and that has killed people, not here in Australia. And so our climate policy here is here in the West are already killing people and climate change has never been shown to have killed a single person”.

However, ABC being the ABC, they simply couldn’t resist the temptation to add the derogatory ad hominem comment from Dr. David Karoly that “neither Professor Carter nor Franks is recognised as a reputable climate scientist”. Thank you, again, David.

Quite what the ABC expects to achieve, except immunity from being sued themselves, by reporting such gratuitous nonsense is unclear.

Equally interestingly, the TV cameras arrived as Dr. Franks and I were leaving the Senate Committee Room, just in time to film the following group of alarmist scientists who, duly, featured on the evening news! Similarly disgraceful press bias was also apparent in the next day’s Canberra Times, which contained detailed coverage of the alarmist scientists’ view and nary a mention of Stewart or me.

And, determined, continuing TV and radio bias notwithstanding, the last few days have brought an astonishing change in the tone and content of the climate change material being reported in the written press, stimulated by both the Senate Committee hearings and by the release of Ian Plimer’s new book.

Those who are interested in assessing a possible renaissance of the critical ability of Australian newspapers, and perhaps even parts of ABC Radio, may care to browse through the following URLs (listed in no particular order):

107 Responses to On a Tortuous Political Problem: Bob Carter

Ah, Professor Karoly; I heard Karoly and Will Steffan doomsaying after the Copenhagen junket; things and predictions are much worse they intoned; David Stockwell had a good comeback to this increase in doom:

“According to a new U.N. report, the global warming outlook is much worse than originally predicted. Which is pretty bad when they originally predicted it would destroy the planet.” –Jay Leno

Karoly is a bit of a disgrace; and waiting on the media to alter its ponderous, vainglorious emphasis is like watching cows trying to go through a gate.

I know it is a bot of cross blog fertilisation, but I just saw on Bolt the lampooning of the new Masters of Climate Change Adaption course… but here we have Bob Carter claiming ““A national climate policy that improves our ability to recognise, manage and adapt to natural climate change and events, as could be met by the creation of a HazNet organisation, is an urgent necessity,”

Jen you should chat to bolt tell him to pull his head in making you genuine skeptics look bad;)

It perplexes me. Why not reject the premise of the question and answer with one’s own opinion? Since professor Carter has stated elsewhere that there’s no historical evidence of CO2 causing increased temperatures to begin with, why not say that carbon reduction schemes are likely to be all-cost, no benefit? (Besides which, the evidence also says that human emissions aren’t the principal cause of increasing CO2, anyway.) Is it now out of fashion to speak one’s mind?

I read through Dr Bob Carter’s piece and found it unconvincing and because of that I thought I would work through his statements and see if anybody can answer my questions.

Unfortunately the transcripts are not yet available for the day Dr Bob Carter appeared before the committee.

From the start:

“My main advice to the committee was that making a decision regarding an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) must be considered as a cost:benefit matter.”

Why and who decides the benefits and the costs and where are the benefits and costs and what are?

“According to the only estimates that I could find, after ramp-up the cost of the Rudd ETS scheme is going to be about an additional $3,500 tax per year per Australian family.”

Where does he get this from, how far did he look? Can he break it down for us in the same way he has broken down the $50 billion he talks about in other topics.

“On the other side, the benefit will be a theoretical (i.e. modelled) reduction in temperature of less than 1/1000 deg. C.”

How was this arrived at? Whose models? I was under the impression he thought modeling for climate was inaccurate.

“I asked the committee if they had such figures in front of them (they didn’t),”

Whose figures does he mean, his figures? If so isn’t that a bit ego centric to expect the committee to have his figures in front of them or is the committee just not that important, I need more information.

“and expressed willingness to drop my estimates in favour of better-founded ones if the committee could provide them. Not a finger, or tongue, stirred!”

Despite the condescension of the last bit could it be that the committee just didn’t believe him?

“It seems to me that an adaptive Plan B, as well as being hugely cheaper than the tabled carbon dioxide taxation bill that the Senate Committee is now considering, will have the additional advantage of actually doing some good.”

Does this mean that he believes that man made climate change is happening or natural warming or global cooling as he has talked about elsewhere. What are the details of this plan B, who devised it, why is it any good?

“However, this will be of much lesser importance for the politicians who are now involved, for their self-perceived need is for a pragmatic solution to what has become a tortuous political problem, quite irrespective of either the cost or of whether any implemented policy actually achieves beneficial ends beyond their own re-election.”

Is this just putting down the men and women, representatives, that he said he was privileged to appear in front of or is Dr Carter just being condescending?

“1. BEWILDERMENT about being faced by two implacably opposing views….”

How was this expressed as we don’t have the transcript yet?

“2. INCREDULITY as to the possibility of a scam of the magnitude that is implied by the sceptics’ view being true.”

What, thousands and thousands of men and women across the world are involved in a fraud or was the committee incredulity aimed at Dr Carter and his statements? There is also a mistake in description here, Dr Carter used the word ‘sceptic’ when he would’ve been more correct to use the common term denialist, but I can understand him using that.

This was followed by an opinion piece on environmentalists plus an opinion piece on the motives of the representatives on the committee (mainly liberals and greens if I have that correct) that belittles them but perhaps Dr carter didn’t follow how this committee was established and he just made those comments out of ignorance but it does jar with him saying he was privileged to appear in front of them.

“It is certain that the enactment of the tabled CPRS emissions scheme would be a disaster for Australia, and nearly all Australians (those working for alternative energy providers and the financial markets being two obvious exceptions, for they will do very nicely thank you should the CPRS Bill be passed);”

Evidence please……

“…. as could be met by the creation of a HazNet organisation, is an urgent necessity, and would cost but a fraction of the mooted ETS. To boot, contingent damage to the economy, energy systems, the standard of living and the world food supply would be avoided.”

Dr Carter has been on the ABC before, was he delivering different views this time than previously?

“However, ABC being the ABC, they simply couldn’t resist the temptation to add the derogatory ad hominem comment from Dr. David Karoly that “neither Professor Carter nor Franks is recognised as a reputable climate scientist”.”

Who recognises Dr Carter as a reputable climate scientist so it my be descriptive and not derogatory from an internationally recognised climate scientist? People on this blog have complained when the ABC doesn’t list opposing views so why is Dr Carter objecting here and he is also showing what he thinks of the ABC at the same time.

“Similarly disgraceful press bias was also apparent in the next day’s Canberra Times, which contained detailed coverage of the alarmist scientists’ view and nary a mention of Stewart or me.”

Apart from the ego centred nature of this remark perhaps the Canberra times just didn’t believe Dr Carter and Franks or the paper couldn’t find evidence to back up what these two men said, we will have to ask the Canberra Times.

“those who are interested in assessing a possible renaissance of the critical ability of Australian newspapers,”

Why is Dr Carter happy to praise the newspapers when they seem to have stuff he likes and the list above is for the Australian (aka ‘the Australian’s war on science’) and the Sydney Morning Herald – to me the world’s only daily lifestyle magazine and so not serious newspapers like the Guardian, the Age, the Independent, the NYT and the LA Times .

Dr Carter seems to build a scenario of his own then expresses deep resentment (above when) reality intrudes into that.

The above is why, as an ordinary voter, I find him very unconvincing but he does seem to have a large ego and I have generally found people with large egos unconvincing so it could just be me, however the bible does say that pride is the greatest sin. Perhaps, other people or Dr Carter himself can show me that my conclusions are wrong.

Last night the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. replayed “An Inconvenient Truth”. I think this is showing numbers 5 & 6 since it is repeated on CBC Newsworld. the same night. Sadly, the CBC is as much a propaganda medium as the BBC and ABC.

In partial reply to JC’s diatribe; the cost of an ETS, CPRS, call it what you will, Clive’s vision to primitise Western society, has been looked at by several reputable sources; Frontier Modelling puts a figure of $2 trillion between now and 2050; that’s in today’s dollars; so, in its current incantation the ETS will cost $50 billion PA; Dr Fisher, former boss of ABARE, puts a slightly lower figure of $1.264 trillion, but that is at the lowest 5% emission reduction level, although Dr Fisher notes that it is based on the gov’t’s assumption of continued strong economic growth.

In terms of opportunity cost, that is the costs and benefits of Clive’s vision, Lomborg has done this using Nordhaus’s RICE and DICE models; on p 41 of “Cool It”, in Fig 11 Lomborg lists the various C&B values of all the different approaches to dealing with AGW on a global basis; the first option is to do nothing; the values here assume effects from AGW such as sea level rises and increased disease vectors, but also benefits such as crop yields and better health/less health expenditure; so the cost of doing nothing is $1 trillion and the benefit is $2 trillion; Lomborg’s most extreme alternative of keeping temperature increases to 1.5C above the current levels is at a cost of $84 trillion with a benefit of $10 trillion. Bear in mind that Lomborg does his calculations on the assumption that AGW is real; if it isn’t then there is no benefit in any of Lomborg’s alternatives.

The real issue with JC’s lament is not Carter producing proof but proof from the AGW side; I ask JC and any of his fellow travellers [stop the donkey I want to get off!] to present 1 {ONE] bit of evidence proving AGW; just 1[ONE]; so how about it JC.

Well I wonder what Karoly would think of people like Hansen, Mann, Flannery and of course Gore (Nobel Prize winner)

Shonkademia will take a long time to recover its credibility when this farce has run its course, and after we are all bankrupted on the altar of grant hunting opportunists and hypocrites, aided and abetted by an entirely complicit beuraucracy.

Add this to the mountain of debt that Krudd is accumulating, and Wongs intransigence and stupidity on the ETS—- I reckon we are stuffed.

Come on Cohers – don’t bore us to death. Let’s not fox around anymore on AGW evidence – faux sceptics will never ever ever ever believe anything short of catastrophic end of the world. Then you would retort “hmmmm could be volcanoes – not sure …”.

You truckers are beyond evidence by now.

SO you WIN THEN – OK so the ETS is a crock then.

So they’re all mad. So a huge international science effort is propagating massive fraud on a global scale never ever before witnessed …

And a hearty bunch of old as fuck geologists, economists, sundry biologists, accountants, lawyers and defenders of the faith have prevailed. The world has been saved from yet another from yet another neo-marxist plot. Phew ! that was close.

And OK so Penny is Wong.

And Ruddster never believed anyway – he just wanted to get elected and abuse flight attendants.

Let’s MOVE ON !

SO ANYWAY – lah de dah – WTF IS PLAN B !!!! eh eh eh ??

Does it go eh? Like is it a goer? Does it err. go? You know what I mean – nudge nudge …

Come on – let’s roll …. DETAILS PLEASE

And Australian rice growers are definitely enjoying the benefits of better crop yields (oh that’s right they’re not …) But anyway – you lose the odd one don’t you ….

Jeremy to rely to your longwinded fantasy, can you explain the difference that Australia will make should it adopt a full bore ETS?
But remember the simple arithmetic, we emit just 1% ( NZ just .01%) of the planets co2, so if levels in the last 150+ years have gone from 280ppm to 380ppm ( .028% to .038% of the atmosphere) , please explain how we can make a difference?
We don’t need your long boring opinion, just please explain in scientific terms how we will achieve anything, besides wasting billions of dollars with a ZERO return on our investment?
OTOH humans have always adapted to climate change over thousands of years and only wizards and fantasists truly believed they could really change the climate.
Alas some of these taxpayer funded fraudsters now call themselves scientists and actually believe they can/ will change the climate channeling their efforts through 1% of the cause. ( their claim not mine)

Well luke, that is the 2nd challenge I’ve put to you which you are ducking; the 1st was the worst alarmist/denialist; stop squibing and be a man; name the proof; is it Philipona and LDR, Santer and the THS, Dessler and increasing high level water, Steig and the Antarctic; what?

Jeremy C, You accuse Bob Carter of having a big ego, and then post your own line by line, thousand word, rejoinder; as if you had been commissioned by some National Academy of your fevered imagination.

“the last few days have brought an astonishing change in the tone and content of the climate change material being reported in the written press, stimulated by both the Senate Committee hearings and by the release of Ian Plimer’s new book.”

There is also another issue – the press are aware from talking to employers that the CRPS will cost lots of jobs in the middle of a recession, and do damage to the government they support. This is a clear message to Kevin Rude to be careful.

Britain despite themselves are building two new power stations which will have a capacity of 2.6 Gw. That is right King Coal it and it only cuts the mustard. Nuclear does also but the ones being built will not come on line soon enough.

Question how many wind mill thingies or solar stations and batteries do we to match these coal powered stations?

Plan B do nothing the delusionists have no answers anyway. We have no power to weather or climate get over it.

It’s plain to see that the leftwing crazies have no idea how an ETS will help solve the climate crisis, (?) particularly when our contribution is a massive 1%.
Plan B of course never alters and that is adaptation, if there is drought or flood we must change to suit the time.
The problems really arise when we have delusional loonies parading around calling themselves scientists and claiming they can control the climate.

Only complete cretins like Krudd and his mindless minions, would go to the public with an announcement for a National Broad Band network to cost $43bn, and do so with no Cost Benefit Analysis having being done, and no market analysis to see if there is need.

Therefore the fact that the ETS has not undertaken an adequate basis of analysis to include the Do Nothing option, as highlighted by Carter, is therefore hardly surprising.

I agree Malcolm even Brown’s looney labor govt refused to go the full hog fibre to the home option because they found there was no demand.
Perhaps if one could get 10gigs (at 100mbs ) for a premium of 20% over BB of 12mbs there may be some demand, but the increase would appear to be 100% ( at least) increase in price according to the estimates I’ve seen.

As I understand it Bob Carter is simply arguing about what is causing the climate change we are seeing at the moment, not that it isn’t happening. In addition, even if CO2 emissions is the main cause, we will still have to live with serious climate change even if emissions are halved by 2050.

So by this logic, any credible plan for dealing with climate change should include something like Bob’s plan B that will help us deal with the problems that may flow from climate change. We will need a more opportunistic form of agriculture to take advantage of temporary rains. We will need crops that don’t depend on “good follow up rains” to produce anything and we will need to make more use of animals, insects and other sources of protein that are able to breed up quickly after rain.

In addition we will need a plan to avoid wars if powerful countries such as the US and China find that climate change has crippled their capacity to feed themselves and those nasty Russians and Canadians dont really want to be overwhelmed by starving foreigners. One wonders whether the cost of these wars was factored into Bob’s do nothing option?

Another problem I have is that ETS is being advanced as the only credible way to drive down emissions. However, there are much better ways of driving down emissions. For example, if ETS is used to clean up electricty, the cost of carbon permits has to be high enough to jump the price of electicity high enough to make clean electricty competitive. By contrast, a more direct approach tailored to meet the specific needs of the electricty industry would avoid this sudden price jump and only reuire that the average price of electricty ramp up slowly in line withthe average cost of producing electricty.

The other point is that some of the things that need to be done to reduce emissions make sense even if AGW is a myth. For example, we clearly need to reduce oil consumption by the transport. The interesting thing is that, if the average fuel consumption of new cars is driven down by regulation there is no need for the inceases in fuel price reuired by ETS.

Sure, we need to put more effort into adapting to climate climate change. However, we urgently need some serious thinking about alternatives to ETS and the best way to deal with specific sources of net carbon pollution and opportunities to extract carbon from the atmosphere.

The sceptical position has always been that the policy for a non problem is to DO NOTHING.

This was, is and will be the Plan B to the Plan A of the AGW bedwetters, a policy designed to counteract the palpably demonstrable pseudoscientifically based delusional belief in the toxity of a benign gas on which carbon based lifeforms depend for their physical existence.

So there is no basis for making any investments in infrastructure. No strategy for climate risk. Shit is just gonna happen. Maybe we should the dam 10 m high or maybe 100m. Who cares? Do whatever you like.

Louis – doing nothing is just what a spectator like yourself is good at.

Louis – you would have to be the biggest dopey draws of all time – Bob Carter – one your Gods has just told you climate changes continuously – he’s suggesting for natural reasons. Stewart Franks – another God of yours has told you that climate has decadal shifts. PLENTY is happening – not NOTHING ! Goose !

So we have climate variability that wreaks its share of havoc with humanity.

In the 3rd world – you often don’t adapt at all – you die.

In the first world you translocate or import supplies or get help.

If you don’t think drought, floods, heatwaves, cold snaps, fire weather, hurricanes and cyclones don’t cause their share of havoc then you’re a bigger dope than I thought you already were.

You’re a geologist living in an air-con caravan. Wet weather stands you down for a few days. You move around if it becomes tedious.

You don’t open up new agriculture nor allocate water from storages. Given the lack of farmers taking up farming in far western NSW at White Cliffs it may surprise you that corporate agriculture actually considers production risk.

On nuclear I think you will find those smelly greens and Karoly carolers are way ahead of you. If you are interested go and have a look at bravenewclimate.com (I guess you may need to hold your nose if you do that) as just one example of stuff on how the nuclear agenda is being advanced by the two groups Dr Carter reserves his ad homs for.

Business decisions in Australia are based on non climatic timsecales, less than 30 years etc. They seem to be based on weather.

Whether we then proceed towards a particular weather scenario depends on whether, or is it wether if I am in the sheep business, or whether you are off your tree, or whether you actually know what you spruik here.

Whether it’s a rhetocial weather, or is it a wether, or a Whether to which we weather the criticism, or whether we ignore it, or whether its an ill weather we are in.

You see you guys have now trashed the temple. You have no basis of calculating anything without being revealed as hypocrites. Anything you pick up to answer my question – you guys has trashed. You now can’t use any contemporary climate science – you’ve denounced it all.

The emissions scheme proposes to take money from emitters, especially fossil fuel electricity producers. This goes to a federal Government pool, which then dispenses it (on unstated guidelines) to the worthy and needy.

The first act of the worthy and needy will be to spend this money. Now, it is almost impossible to think of a major way to spend windfall money without using more electricity/gas and so producing more greenhouse gases. The economists’ merry-go-round goes around. Can you list some ways that you could spend such money without increasing greenhouse gases?

Nuclear is the only major option I can envisage.

You might say “wind power”. Now, nuclear has been around for half a century and installations have gone from cradle to grave many times. The economics are well known. There are practically no wind farms that have produced power for very long, so the grave experience is infrequent, mostly stillborn examples. It is seldom modelled economically to the logical end. An example of unintended consequences was reported this month as below:

“Scandinavian power price surprises. Finland has announced its intention to put a tax on nuclear and hydro power sources built before 1997 because in the operation of a carbon trading market they will make good profits. The tax will apply to 2182 MWe of nuclear capacity and about 3000 MWe of hydro at a rate of up to EUR one cent per kWh. It will thus counter the incentive to maximise the utilisation of non carbon-emitting base-load plant.

Denmark trades power in the same Nord Pool, which has announced that from October the spot floor price for surplus power will drop from zero to minus EUR 20 cents/kWh. In other words, wind generators producing power in periods of low demand will have to pay the network to take it. Nord Pool said that “A negative price floor has been in demand for some time – especially from participants trading Elspot in the Danish bidding areas. … Curtailment of sales may give an imbalance cost for the affected seller and thus creates a willingness to pay in order to deliver power in the market.” This is likely to have a negative effect on the economics of wind power in the region, since a significant amount of Denmark’s wind power production is affected.

Did you get the bit “wind generators will have to pay the network to take it?” Why is this? Well, projects like solar and wind farms that exist only because of significant subsidies cause resentment among competitors not subsidised – or worse, taxed to excess. When the worm turns, the taxed producers turn on the subsidised ones and try their hardest to claw back the subsidy advantage. Like a natural urge to level the playing field.

Jeremy, how are you going to prevent these demonstrated market forces from working? You will have to accept one day, that massive subsidies carry the seeds of their own destruction.

Bob Carter would know this; hence his emphasis on overcoming political ignorance rather than scientific fraud. To win the latter would be a shallow victory.

I have always been impressed with your knowledge and professionalism when explaining the alternate view on the climate change issue.

I remember seeing Bob on the panel that debated the global warming swindle docmentary on the ABC a few years ago, I also remember David Korely on the same show at thought at the time what complete muppet he came across as. Things haven’t changed for David obviously!!

So its not just windy farms that will pay but every generator and if I understand the information this is the way Nordpool works with its Point Tariff system. However, I may have misunderstood it so you can always ring the Elspot helpdesk, phone +47 6752 8010 and pin it down for us

Nowwwwwww Geoff. Give me one example of an energy generating and carrier system that doesn’t receive government subsidies, referenced please.

JC; I concede Brooks and Jimmy Hansen are converts to nuclear but to group the smellies in there is just plain disingenuous and you’l have to link Karoly’s support before I believe that; incidentally, this guy has some good insight into nuclear;

Cohenite, thanks for the link to the article and this is the beauty of IFR that Barry B is pushing but I have two questions:

1. Your link, there is no mention of intermediate waste e.g. this makes up a lagre proportion of the UK’s 100 billion pound nuclear clean up

2. WRT to IFR, I don’t understand the engineering logistics of taking spent fuel from a Gen II or Gen III and reworking it to fit the fuel cycle of an IFR but this is not a question to you (unless you got an answer) but a general one.

Luke,
You would put your “business plan” to the financiers with whatever favourable “climate evidence” you could find or manufacture, and it would be up to them to decide. This is day-to-day risk assessment and management. Private enterprise is not waiting with baited breath for a Plan B from anyone, not the least from CSIRO, BOM, Wong, wound up bloggers… You have never done a days work outside the public sector have you.

JC and luke and others; perhaps the best comparative analysis of the various forms of energy including nuclear and the waste issue is also from Thin King Man;

Comment from: Thinking Man November 27th, 2008 at 8:03 pm

Energy is like a river; it exists in two ways: flows and stores.

When you store energy, you create a dam to capture it.

What environmentalists call “renewable energy” is really just the stored energy of the sun.

In actuality, though, there’s no such thing as “renewable energy”: all energy, even the sun, is limited.

Fossil fuels are energy stores as well – specifically, they are stored solar energy, a process that takes millions of years – and they are highly concentrated, ten times more so than, for instance, wood.

In terms of wind and raw solar energy, the flow is exceptionally diluted: solar is 10 to 50 times less concentrated than fossil fuel. When you can’t concentrate it, then, the only way to harvest it is to use more and more land. That’s the limiting factor for both sun and wind energy.

T. Boone Pickens’s now-infamous plan would require 1,200 square miles for a single power plant.

Compare that to nuclear, which would require only one square mile.

Coal is extraordinarily abundant – we’ll never run out – and pound-for-pound contains twice as much energy as wood. Coal is a concentrated storehouse of energy.

Octane molecules in gasoline, however, are even more concentrated. In fact, they’re the densest store of carbon energy we’ve ever discovered. Pound-for-pound, gas possesses four times as much energy as coal. There’s a popular misconception today that gasoline is inefficient and wasteful. Nothing could be more inaccurate.

Gas molecules are not only by far the densest form of carbon energy we’ve ever discovered; they’re also easy to transfer because they’re fluid, which are two of the greatest reasons we’ve adopted gasoline.

Nuclear, on the other hand, is something else entirely. The public hasn’t even begun to grasp nuclear energy.

Fact: A palmful of uranium contains more energy than 100 boxcars full of coal.

Fact: Consumption of energy creates more energy, not less.

Fact: Despite years of government subsidies (regulators in the U.S., for instance, have forced utility companies to buy “renewables”), these same renewables generate only about 0.9 percent of our total electricity.

Fact: The most efficient solar panels currently in use (on the space station) are costly, and their conversion efficiency is about 20 percent, which is not very much.

Fact: Twelve miles of solar reflectors generate about 300 megawatts, a miniscule amount. Furthermore, those reflectors must be kept squeaky clean, maintained to the hilt, or they won’t work.

Fact: At our current level of technology, no conceivable mix of solar, wind, or wave can meet even half the demand for energy.

If, however, wind, wave, and solar are to become more efficient, it is only science and technology – as opposed to environmentalism’s plan of blasting us back into the Dark Ages – that will get them there.

Fact: We begin to know about a resource only when we begin to use it. Knowing about that resource includes a cursory calculation of its quantity.

The more we use of it, therefore, the better we become at finding it and calculating its quantity, extracting it and refining it. Thus, the more we use of a resource, the more of it we’re able to find.

This will sound counterintuitive, but only at first: then you glimpse its awesome logic. The entire history of resource use and extraction has followed this pattern without deviation.

Boone Pickens, Al Gore, Barack Obama, and many, many others are all calling for massive subsidization of the wind power industry.

As with ethanol and recycling and a host of other issues, you must ask yourself again: if these things are so efficient, why do they need to be subsidized?

Answer: they’re not so efficient.

Energies that require massive subsidization benefit absolutely no one; the only reason they need to be subsidized is that they cannot compete on the open market.

That fact alone tells you everything you need to know about them: they’re simply not good enough yet.

When they are, the free market will adopt them naturally, provided the government does not cave to special interest groups, which is exactly what’s happened with nuclear in the United States.

The reason wind power still won’t get us very far is that transmitting this power is such a huge difficulty.

Wind, as mentioned in both the article and the comments above, is also unpredictable; it’s therefore hard to integrate into an electrical grid, since grids have to maintain a voltage balance, or you’ll get brownouts, blackouts, and power surges that destroy equipment by the ton.

“The Grid,” incidentally, refers to the entire energy infrastructure. It even includes the electrical wires that go into your house.

Grid operators spend their whole lives trying to balance supply and demand on the grid.

Energy demand changes all throughout the day, all throughout the year. In summer, for instance, demand is higher. Late at night, demand is lower.

Grid operators balance all this.

Factor in the wind, which you cannot predict more than, at most, five hours in advance, and try pulling all that wind power into a grid, and you’ll begin to see how impossible the task is.

Wind needs constant backup.

“Spinning reserve” on an electrical grid refers to the amount of back-up power that is sitting there, waiting to go at a moment’s notice in case something goes wrong.

In general, 20 percent extra power is the standard spinning reserve on the grid.

Wind can indeed supplement a grid with this needed 20 percent spinning reserve, but it cannot come close to replacing fossil fuel.

Here’s what you don’t see in the fine print:

The vast majority of wind energy needs to be transmitted. Thus, you’ll need to step up voltage to 745 kilovolts (which is a lot) so that wind doesn’t lose all its energy in the transmitting process.

We’ll also have windmills covering the entire great plains. Quoting energy expert William Tucker:

“If Boone Pickens dream is realized, you’ll be able to drive from Texas to North Dakota without ever being out of sight of a windmill, just as in Denmark.”

That is, except for Boone Pickens’s backyard.

Said Pickens: “I’m not going to have the windmills on my ranch: they’re ugly.”

Indeed.

And that, in part, is why people are already objecting.

Windmills are taller than the Statue of Liberty, and they’re loud; the Audubon Society calls them “condor Cuisinarts.”

Wind comes strongest along mountain crests. Thus the Blue Ridge Mountain, the Adirondacks, the Appalachians, and so on, would all have their ridges lined with these monstrosities. Yet enviros object to the building of one small nuclear plant, which compared with a windfarm is tiny.

Uranium generates gigantic amounts of energy in a very small space which wind and solar combined cannot come close to. Those who say otherwise – those who are anti-nuclear, in other words – have brought the world 400 million more tons of coal used per year, because for thirty years now, since 1979, following the Three Mile Island accident, we’ve been using more coal.

The meltdown of the uranium core in 1979 at Three Mile Island was so overblown by anti-nuclear groups that it went virtually unnoticed how the containment vessel at Three Mile Island had done its job and prevented any significant release of radioactivity.

Uranium is abundant, clean, and safe – in technological societies.

The catastrophe at Chernobyl, which once again sent greens groups worldwide scurrying to their soapboxes, only happened because that state-run reactor was astonishingly unsafe: in the words of Peter Huber, “You couldn’t have operated a toaster oven out of it.”

Few scientists disagree that the discovery of energy at the nucleus of the atom is the greatest scientific feat of the 20th century. All this talk about how we need to “discover a new form of energy” therefore misses the point: we’ve already done so. It’s called nuclear energy. And it’s amazing.

We discovered that the concentration of energy in the nucleus of the atom is 2 million times as great as energy in the shell of an atom.

Fact: there are tiny amounts of uranium residue in coal; those trace residuals have more energy potential than all the coal itself.

Chemical energy, which is everything from wood to crude oil to gasoline to coal, consists of playing with the electrons, changing their energy state.

With nuclear, however, the big discovery was that there’s far more energy in the nucleus of the atom. Therefore, it produces a far, far smaller “footprint.”

In fact, there’s really no such thing as “nuclear waste”: a nuclear reactor is refueled by its waste.

In other words, almost all “waste” can be recycled. Indeed, 95 percent of a spent nuclear fuel rod is natural uranium, and so it can be put right back in the ground, just as it was found.

The radioactive part constitutes only about 5 percent, but of that, half is uranium and plutonium, and so it can be recycled as fuel – specifically mixed oxide fuel, which is exactly what the French have been doing for 25 years now.

After 25 years, the French store all their so-called waste in one room, under La Hague, which is about the size of a basketball gymnasium.

Why haven’t you heard this? A writer for the New Yorker magazine named John McPhee in 1974 published a highly influential book called The Curve of Blinding Energy which convinced President Jimmy Carter (et al) that people could steal used plutonium from nuclear plants and makes bombs with it. But this is untrue.

Nevertheless, solely on the basis of this detrimental misinformation, the U.S. now has fifty thousand tons of nuclear “waste,” because our government won’t allow nuclear plants to reuse it.

The stated policy of the Department of Energy (DOE) is “not to reprocess” a perfectly reusable by-product – and all for absolutely no good reason.

That is why Yucca Mountain is unnecessarily, and at great cost, being built in southwestern Nevada to store a nuclear “waste” that could instead be simply and efficiently reused.

Nuclear “waste” is also used for medical isotopes. Over 40 percent of medicine now is nuclear medicine. Currently, we must import all our nuclear isotopes because we’re not allowed to use any of our own. This is not only truly profligate; it’s a kind of lunacy.

We’re the only country in the world that doesn’t reuse its nuclear by-products.

Nuclear energy is the cleanest, most efficient energy we have – by light years. Anyone who tells you differently, is flat-out wrong.

“You would put your “business plan” to the financiers with whatever favourable “climate evidence” you could find or manufacture, and it would be up to them to decide. This is day-to-day risk assessment and management” says Lazlo

DR MICHAEL LUKE WALKER
School of Physics,
University of New South Wales
NSW
AUSTRALIA

“”VOLUNTEER EXPLAINER. Questacon, at the (Australian) National Science
and Technology Centre, is a science museum where I supervised some of the exhibits and
explained them to members of the general public.

PARTICIPANT IN “ADOPT A PHYSICIST” PROGRAM. An initiative by the Australian
Institute of Physics to encourage secondary students to study physics.

GRADUATE TEACHING PROGRAM. A twelve week course of seminars and group
discussions on effective teaching.

VICE-PRESIDENT and PRESIDENT OF MONASH PHYSICS SOCIETY. I led a committee
which organised special lectures, excursions and social functions to promote physics on campus.

Hey Luke if you really are with UNSW check out the team that has researched the Indian ocean dipole back to 1880.
Ask them how the’ve arrived at the conclusion that this causes the drought conditions over southern Aust since 1992. ( positive IOD since 1992)

There is no evidence the human race has ever released such a massive amount of CO2 into the atmosphere before in the geological record. Does that mean we just sit on our hands and do nothing till this experiment is over in a few centuries?

Speaking of “Fiction and Fantasy Appreciation ” – you guys are heavily into Fantasy being led around the ring by sceptics pulling your chain. I guess it could be worse – you could listen to talk back radio. That’ll get your blood boiling. So many people to be angry about.

Funny Neville that you’d point out IOD – an AGW example perhaps – have you been converted? Bob won’t let you play on the Plan B team if you keep this up.

And speaking of Plan B – it’s very telling that you’ve all ducked the issue.

Good grief, Luke leads a church choir and then has the gall vilify sceptics here? Of course, sceptics are also Tories and for the political left anything is permitted in the battle against the Tories.

I also note Bob Carter’s comments vis. the Media’s late arrival at the Senate Hearing – AGW was and is a political agenda masquerading as science. Simple as that.

And Luke has a PHd? Given his inability to reason his case here, that must be a mistake. I thought everything in Physics has been settled, and that PHd’s in that area of science would be quite hard to achieve.

BTW I know that .01% of the atmosphere is an increase of 35% in co2, but I don’t accept that all of that increase is due to human activity either.
Plan B is adaptation always has been always will be, with new technology being part of that mix, GET IT?
Anyhow I’m busy, so gotta go.

Double Good Grief but I suspect its for a science topic as the degree itself if called that – though PJ Rourke knows of what he speaks when describing lefties – I can vouch for that from very personal experience.

No wonder it’s been a battle with him – but then the whole AGW argument always was between the lefties with their pseudoscience and real science. The problem with lefties or Socratists is the belief that facts are determined by consensus among experts, and that’s the explanation for its popular appeal – empirical science has always had a battle with this group.

Anybody that is interested in David Karoly’s credentials, research and publications may like to check out:http://www.findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/researcher/person67077.html
The “comment from Dr. David Karoly that “neither Professor Carter nor Franks is recognised as a reputable climate scientist”” bears little weight. An examination of Karoly’s career work is comparatively lightweight! Such outright denigration of a fellow professional is frowned upon in most professions.

Looey the fly – you have made some typos – you mean between denialist pseudo-science (always unpublished or in E&E) and real science. Remember Looey – the moment you think you are Galileo and “they all don’t understand me” – you’re not. You’re just plain and simple WRONG

SJT: “There is no evidence the human race has ever released such a massive amount of CO2 into the atmosphere before in the geological record. Does that mean we just sit on our hands and do nothing till this experiment is over in a few centuries”.

No but there is massive evidence that historical CO2 levels were far higher than anything humanity could add to the Atmosphere and nothing tipped over then. In fact present CO2 levels are the lowest ever to have been on the Earth.

And there is also no evidence the human race has ever – in the geological record.

Another splendid example of a Non Sequitur. SJT stop it, with you and the looney physicist here, you two are indeed the Climate Clowns.

Luke , why if AGW is not occuring would you have a plan B that is anything other than adapting to natural climate change????? Do you honestly believe humans can control climate?
Animals and humans have always adapted to natural climate change…..even the Keppel coral reef has recovered from its 2006 problems……..

Re Solar power , I was away over the easter break in Morgan on the Murray river. We stayed on a property that was powered by solar energy ( put in 4 years ago)and a back up diesel generator. It cost him 75,000 for the solar less a 30% subsidy ( approx 50k) and another 15k for the generator. So to be totally self sufficient in energy and run a modern household with 3 people he outlayed 65k. Even with interest rates at all time lows, to borrow this money will cost at least 4k per annum and realistically more like 5k. That is a very expensive source of power…especially when he also needs to pay for diesel when he uses the back up system.
Another way to look at it is to think that he had the money so could be using it to earn interest in a term deposit. Even today he will be able to get at least 5 % for a medium term term deposit….So that means he could be earning at least 3250 pa in interest. Thats a very big electricity bill……….

I like Carters reference to Americans ( I think read USA people) . He wrote “I believe that in most cases this perception is now actually wrong, as indicated by a new poll yesterday that shows that only 1 in 3 Americans now believe AGW to be a significant problem”. So about 2/3 believe it is not . That is probably about the same proportion who believe in creationism, astrology, the death penalty, low carb beer. I rest my case. So when did beliefs trump evidence.?

What is happening is an unintended consequence of the the large scale buring of fossil fuels. No control about it at all.

Yes NO control at all – unless you are going to force everyone to stop burning it!!

I’m not sure how you are going to achieve that especially when you can’t actually prove the connection with empirical evidence. In case you haven’t noticed the earth is cooling and sea levels have remained stationary despite CO2 increasing.

“It seems to me that an adaptive Plan B, as well as being hugely cheaper than the tabled carbon dioxide taxation bill that the Senate Committee is now considering, will have the additional advantage of actually doing some good. ”

Bob. Haven’t you allowed these clowns to browbeat you into a compromise here? Our adaptive plan is to start sacking non-defense taxeaters by the bushel, and then start cutting corners for nuclear fission and synthetic diesel production by the free market. Start pre-approving vastly more sites than could even be taken up. That sort of thing.

Adapting to the new little ice age is about keeping CO2 emissions high, getting energy right and mass-sackings in the public sector. Soon as you go off proposing some adaption strategy you are inviting control by a bunch of lunatics that would be barely employable anywhere in the real world.

“However, ABC being the ABC, they simply couldn’t resist the temptation to add the derogatory ad hominem comment from Dr. David Karoly that “neither Professor Carter nor Franks is recognised as a reputable climate scientist”. Thank you, again, David.”

None of you ought ever miss an opportunity to get a good punch in when you come face to face with that defamatory, insulting, unscientific, snotty little geek. I certainly wouldn’t. First time he gainsayed me I’d slap him one. Or grab him by the wrist and make him punch his own self. I certainly steal his glasses and hold them until such time as he stopped lying and admitted he was lying and said he would never do it again.

You’ll regret it if you don’t whack him one. You might think you won’t regret it but you will. What a reptile he is. He cannot see to relax even when sitting down. I bit of biff baff will bring him back to scientific reason. Its for his own good.

Toby – take your chill pill and go and have a go at answering my peanut farm example above. Try thinking about some real world issues involving climate – forget about AGW – tell me how you’re going to inform the Board about climate risk in this real world example. Tell me what you might do (broadly speaking). Unless of course you really have never thought about climate seriously and are just angry and anxious about AGW – do you think natural variability is nice?

And so biffo Birdy is gonna deck Karoly. You’d have to be kidding – you couldn’t fight your way out of wet paper bag you big slug. Brag on…

Well Luke, if you have gone into the farming game without looking at the climate for “your” region then you deserve to fail. I certainly would not be placing faith in models that rely on “atmosphere” to guide climate when there are clearly many factors at play.
Do i think natural variablity is nice? sorry daft question unless you actually think you can control it???? you must adapt to what is happening. Climate is dynamic, it changes! I would think you should have afew plans in place for your peanut farm….based on how you will adapt to natural changes…whatever they might be.

Toby – I have to say I’m very disappointed. You clearly know nothing of climate risk analysis for construction of any infrastructure. You have given a total non-answer.

Any board engaged in an agricultural development would simply show you the door.

I could elaborate but it’s really a waste of time trying to have a sensible discussion with you guys.

I have listed a very practical Australian example – it’s very telling that nobody has had a go at it.

You lot truly are clueless – sorry not meant as an insult. It’s just that you haven’t seriously ever thought about these issues apart from the blog rage level.

You see this sort of statement “I would think you should have a few plans in place for your peanut farm….based on how you will adapt to natural changes…whatever they might be.” is about equivalent to http://dilbert.com/2009-04-17/ “The economist strip”

Maybe we don t undertand what you are really asking? In relation to AGW, even if its occuring an ETS = PLAN A will achieve no discernible fall in temp even if co2 is teh driver of recent warming. So we need a plan B or c or d etc….BUT since i do not beleive on a globals scale we ar einfluencing climate the other plans will revolve around how we will adapt to whateever change is occuring.

Re your farm, of course you look at climate and things that may help you predict what may happen in teh forseable future….but i don t think i would be placing much faith in predictions coming from cliamte models…since they are so consistently wrong.

i worked in finance for years….foreign exchange, i talked to customers for a few years and then made markets. When i was a salesman i wold use the line that wether you chose to hedge yoru exposures or not you are speculating. You can however take a view on currency direction, future foreign exchange exposures, expected revenue streams and expenditures.

Many large companies like CRA/ RIO decided they would not hedge anything, others take a differnt view. Neither is consistently right or wrong, at different times both approaches worlk well….why…because currency movements are so difficult to predict.

If I had a dam on my cattle stationin teh outback with enough water to keep me going only 6mnths or a year, and we were predicted to be in drought for a while longer due to el nino etc then i would make plans to sell some stock…or at least hedge through the futures market.

If it was apparent that rainfall patterns had shifted and hence climate had changed ( ie long term weather for an area) then id be stupid not to be aware and plan around that ….but thinking that somehow i could change the climate with one of my plans would not be part of my planning!…..but i could look to build some new dams for extra storage when it does rain, i could look at planting diffenrt vehgetation…such as salt bush for sheep, if i ws irrigating i might ensure we used drip or underground watering to limit evaporation, i might do any number of things….but i would not be thinking i could control the climate….and that seem sto be where we disagree?

I would not for instance start up a peanut farm where they were not viable based on climate!?

(4) you had to ignore ALL the modern climate literature that pointed to centennial trends in events with significant changes in the last 20 years in terms of atmospheric circulation

(5) you had to reject all the modern published climate science – how could use as you had ridiculed it for years now

(6) you’d abused BoM (for years) so much that they didn’t help you with your data

You invest $50M of shareholders money in a new development and lose your shirt.

You have no basis for a Plan B. No science. You start chanting and consult witch doctors.

You cannot construct a Plan B. You become a consultant sell broad statements to gullible investors.

Toby you obviously have no idea how to construct a decision analytic in an El Nino environment – fair enuff – but if you did you’d be the biggest hypocrite in the world if you entered any numbers from any source you had previously denounced.

The joke is on you lot – Bob’s pulling you chain about an adaptive Plan B – he has no idea nor intention of ever providing one. He’s only a wrecker.

And having totally trashed the climate science temple – enjoy the rubble. Revel in the shards. Enjoy the shonks and scammers that inhabit the denial-o-sphere. They’re all you now have.

Luke, what the fuck are you ranting about? it seems to me you are talking apples and oranges. Plan A in bobs thinking is an ETS that achieves nothing at great expense. So monitor teh changes that are occuring and look to adapt…as has always happened. As an economist and prior banker I have never ever had any =faith in the models…i would never bet my money or my customers or banks money based on what a model was telling me. Christ you didnt have to be very clever to realise teh world was building a credit bubble and a disaster was going to occur…and yet so many clever people missed it cos they believed there stupid models. I never did, I sold out in 2007.
I cant believe teh govts of the world are acting the way they are now and cant see that if they do bring us out of this recession early, they will just make the next one in a few years much much worse.
Not beleiving in the models did not mean i did not / do not take “bets” on what will happen in the future, but i base those decioins on what i think will happen based on factors that i think count…if i was a farmer i would do the sam ething

Imagine we are in 2020, climate is much the same as today or a bit cooler….would you be doing anything different in your planning and business plan that you were doing in 2009? 1999? Probably not….

So let’s take Bob up on an adaptive Plan B – we just “adapt” – we work it out somehow as we go.

But with what Toby – all climate knowledge has now been trashed. So Toby would you like to now pick some bits you’d like. But Toby you sceptics have denounced it all.

Your lack of knowledge of how much of Australia’s agriculture interacts with climate is gob-smacking.

Mate we’ve spents billions – billions mate – over decades on a sector that is supposed to know what it’s doing.

We’ve STUFFED vast areas of rangelands overgrazing in droughts.

If temperature changes the fruit in your new olive orchard may not be vernalised -i.e. not set.

Change that 30:40:30 to 20:40:40 and that’s the difference between being in business and broke.

“but i base those decioins on what i think will happen based on factors that i think count”

what like divining chook guts? You’re just arm waving Toby.

Face it Toby – you don’t study this field – you don’t read the latest work. You’re just so up in arms about ETS’s and Al Gore that you’ve forgotten too look at what is sailing past your nose. Like http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2009/flow.jsp

Mate I’m not angry with you – I don’t think anyone on here is going to change their mind about AGW – but we hardly ever progress past the trivial do we.

A Plan B by Bob is a good idea. But everyone is so busy ranting that it will neve rbe discussed.

Luke, the gross exagerations and lies that we are being fed by many climate scientists/ media/ commentators will leave climate sceince in a wasteland when AGW is finally laid to rest.

I dont think any farmer or business would consider farming agriculture without looking at rainfall, temp, cycles for the region in which they are considering operating. And I have no doubt that farmers would use many factors when considering if/ when / what and how much to plant, including ocean temp and cycles. I still think you are talking apples and oranges. And i dont think its hypocritical of me to be sceptical of science based on models, give me evidence please, not models. Everything happening is within the realms of natural variablity.

many rivers are receiving less flow…. its well documented that the himalayan mountain glaciers have been retretaing and melt water levels are decreasing. These glaciers have been melting since the end of the LIA, also human use has shot up since the start of the last century, in 100 years popn has increased from 1 billion to 6 billion, much of it in areas where rivers are seeing less flow…..could it also be water use? dams etc?

“I dont think any farmer or business would consider farming agriculture without looking at rainfall, temp, cycles for the region in which they are considering operating.” – maaatttee – wakey wakey – so why then have we had billions upon billions going out in drought aid for decades in a sector that has it all under control. Why do rice growers have no water?

“And I have no doubt that farmers would use many factors when considering if/ when / what and how much to plant, including ocean temp and cycles.” – NO YOU CAN’T – you guys have said all that science is corrupt/wrong. You have no basis at all for using any of it. Otherwise you’re being hypocrites. It’s all from the same stable !!

“Everything happening is within the realms of natural variablity.” – WHY – just coz you think it is?

And given natural variability exists what would an AGW signal look like. It would look like a small departure emerging from a fog of natural variation. This is where you are in history.

Toby Toby – a central prediction of AGW – drying out of sub-tropics is coming true. The obs matching the models and the broad observations.

To not have any concern and be whistling as you walk is sooooo naive. Indeed food security is back as a major global issue. Growing world population. 6B going to 9B. Pretty well all arable land and freshwater resources exploited.

Tell me Toby – have you read the recent science on SAM, STR and IOD?

Evidence Toby for anyone looking at such a complex system has to be based on observations, physical mechanisms and models which reproduce the effects and interactions.

You have a growing story under your feet if you start to doing some reading. And that reading isn’t blog comics.

There is a chance too that the average AGW type scientist is also wrong. The impacts could be much worse.

A quieter Sun and change in PDO have simply knocked the trend of what will be an inevitable temperature rise when it flips back.

The big changes evident in circulation patterns are the key to watch. All about redistribution of rainfall in the end – and who wins and who loses.

As for Bob’s Plan B – hahahahahahahahaha

You’re on your own mate !

Notice I did not advocate an ETS ! If that’s all you can think about you’re forever doomed to throw out the climate science with political bathwater.

If you have any sophistication you might consider that elements o fthe science may indeed by dead right. Just that the policy fixes being touted are unacceptable. But simply because you don’t like an ETS is not a logical resaon to assume that the climate science THEREFORE MUST BE wrong.

Adaptive plan B has to be mass-sackings of taxeaters and long-term tax exemptions. Coupled with these politicians staying home and using persuasion to go around to every State Premier and mayor in the country and try and get advanced approval of far more areas than we could possibly ever need, for nuclear fission and synthetic diesell plants. As well as for port facilities and other things. Not to get them built. The tax exemptions will get them built. Just to get a sellers market for the real estate needed and to deep-six every last bit of red tape in advance.

They’ve got to stop schmoozing round the world and selling our sovereignty for a day in the spotlight and instead start doing the hard yards of persuasion in every locality. Our rights are universal but they must be expressed locally. So its not a case of politicians using compulsion from the centre. Its much harder work than that. Its about taking persuasion to the localities. Persuade them to end or loosen zoning. To end height restrictions. To pre-approve massive areas, public and private, for important uses.

Rudd is a useless diplomat anyhow and so he should stay home. Massive oversupply of medium-size port facilities, just big enough to load and unload containers is kind of a big deal. Since everyone knows that nothing beats sea transport for energy efficiency with heavy cargo.

I have never ever supported the concept of a government subsidy for any business best run by private enterprise.

As for electrical generation schemes without a government subsidy, well, we built the whole town of Jabiru and the Ranger processing pant without subsidy. Also, we ran the powerhouse at Cape Lambert that powered the whole of the iron ore province of the Pilbara. You do not need peer-reviewed articles to prove this. You can go there and see the reality for yourself. There is a book “The Power Switch at Robe River” Author Gethin, Patrick, 1936-
Description Perth, W.A. : Australian Institute for Public Policy, c1990.
iv, 71 p. : ill. ; 21 cm.
ISBN 0949186376 (corrected) : 0949186379

Now having answered your query about my innocence or ignorance, what is your response to my observation that a carbon emission trading scheme is a circular money churn with huge transaction costs? Were you able to conceive of a significant way to spend the proceeds of an emissions impost without production of more GHGs? Is there a fault with my logic or are you just ignoring a question you have no answer for?

At least Ross Garnaut is accepting the circularity argument and changing his preferences. Before long, I think he will return to his economics profession a wiser man, determined to avoid the treachery inherent in politics.

Someone put a large pile of paper from Leon Ashby, a climate sceptic, into my mailbox.. I glanced through it and chuckled at the inadequacy of his thinking, He is obsessed with the inadequacies one can find in the ETS, but failed to see any motes in his own eye.

I don’t care a damn whether the “human responsible global warming model” is right or wrong. I’m not a climate expert and thus have always been open about the whole story.

BUT I am enthusiastically in favour of any plans to stop the production of co2 by the use of fossil fuels. Yes, it is right to say that a change to renewable energy will lower our standard of living for a while. They pay lip service to our need to change but ignore the thousand reasons why it is necessary – they are obsessional about the ETS.

We have enough oil to last perhaps a hundred years and coal perhaps could last for about 400 years. Then there will be nothing cheap left to burn easily and we will be forced to adopt a sustainable lifestyle. Then there will then be no option.

The present movement towards living with sustainable energy resulting from the experts belief in “Human caused global warming” means that we can soon wean ourselves off burning oil and coal. They are chemical treasure-houses and should never be wasted by burning them. Perhaps our generation could leave some of these treasures for future generations.

I think we are just thoughtless – we couldn’t care a damn about our descendants. Oil and coal are valuable. We waste most of their properties by burning them. Our descendants would love to have a share but we are so greedy that we want to take them all and waste them for making energy – which we can have endlessly from the sun, tides, wind and geothermally. Stupid and selfish.

We believe that oil and coal are cheap. They both took millions of years to create – how much should we be valuing a resource if it takes millions of years to produce and can never be replaced? We naively think that the cost of digging them out of the earth is a real cost. Do you believe the costs we pay for coal and oil are realistic? Of course this is nonsense. That trivial cost is what we pretend is their value. This pretending lets us waste them. It also lets us pretend that their use is cheaper than renewable sources of energy. Any child could work out that their use is really a thousand times dearer than renewable energy. You know it is a pretend game and that to conserve these resources is the only sensible course. But we are greedy and of recent years, we learned that greed is good!

I like to think that our species will last for thousands or millions of years. They will need everything we are ripping out of the earth, every mineral, every chemical. But we want them all and we want them now. We have no plans to ensure that we recapture everything we use once – for every chemical and mineral will last for millions of years and all need conserving and recycling. We are just beginning to think of recycling – a moment’s thought makes it obvious that everything must be conserved, regardless of cost. But our greed allows us to argue that it is mostly too expensive because it is often cheaper to dig more from the earth. Yet every gram will be required over and over again by our descendants.

We are not sensible livers – we are plunderers. Our economic system has only money as a value measure. It ignores the intrinsic value of these permanent minerals and chemicals. Our only interest is immediate plunder – how much can we rip up, waste and disperse as quickly as we can with as much immediate profit as possible.

The Club of Rome in the 70’s wrote about “Limits to Growth”. It tried to look ahead, something we should have learned from them – their logic was inescapable. We should have embraced it and made it a central activity for humankind long into the future. They attempted to show how long resources of the earth would last. Technology improved and quickly made their estimates incorrect. The plunderers then made sure that their imaginative attempt at logical thinking and planning ahead was trivialised, denounced and eliminated so completely that one never hears their name today. Yet these were real and imaginative people who tried to look logically at our failure to look ahead and predict sensible consequences. Bright people today could do much better – and those in fifty years hence will be able to do the same job even better still.

Logic suggests to me that we should be grateful for those finding a reason to stop burning and wasting real resources. It suggests to me that the “climate sceptics” are appealing only to our greed and selfishness rather than thinking about the future of our grandchildren. Sadly logic will never overwhelm greed. So please bless the global warmers and the co2 worriers. They have just a chance of moving us to a sustainable lifestyle a hundred years before we would inevitably be forced to. They could make us pay our own way realistically sooner rather than leaving it to our grandhcildren to pay for our greedy profligate living style. Ask again and again, what is the real value of a tonne of coal or oil? Do you really think it is cheaper than renewable energy?

You are right about costs. Changing from coal and oil wasting will be expensive. It will mean thousands of people forced to change jobs. It will take enormous resources to invest in these other forms of energy. Only a fool believes that it won’t be necessary – the only question is when. This moment is history offers us a chance to decide to do it soon. We know it will hurt. We do it now or leave it to our grandchildren. The selfish and greedy ones will leave it to our grandchildren. The proud and independent ones will delight in the challenge.

I suggest that climate sceptics start some real thinking – this time outside the box in which they are locked. Humankind has a real challenge before it and the time is right NOW.

Please feel free to pass this on – it may help others think beyond next the decade.

All I read of these climate change skeptic’s arguments are the inconsequential and unrelated things that ‘Krudd’ has done. I.e. ‘abused an air hostess’ oh! He abused an air hostess! That must mean that theres no such thing as climate change!

Have any of you skeptics even read the IPCC assessment reports? Maybe try reading Mann 1998, wait-stop the presses! Try and read ANY journal article published recently from a CREDIBLE source, AND a CREDIBLE writer.

As an aside as the skeptics are allowed to use unrelated tidbits as arguments, Robert Carter is on the research committee of the Institute of Public Affairs, a right-wing group that has received funding from corporate interests including oil and tobacco companies. Highly unrelated-but very persuasive.

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[…] aren’t temperatures rising everywhere ??? Yep, "rising" just like the credibility of Al Gore… Meanwhile, unlike the **** YOU greed of Al Gore, we have some common sense from Bob Carter – LAST Wednesday, I had the privilege of appearing in front of the Australian Senate Select Committee on Climate Policy. My main advice to the committee was that making a decision regarding an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) must be considered as a cost:benefit matter… Jennifer Marohasy On a Tortuous Political Problem: Bob Carter […]